


Illicit Affairs

by MagalaBee



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), allusions to non-con and sexual assault across generations, i hope everyone understands what i was trying to do with this... :' ))), spoilers for his supports with dorothea, this is an exploration of generational assault and hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagalaBee/pseuds/MagalaBee
Summary: These things have a way of effecting a family... From the young housemaid to the optimistic whore to the clever mockingbird. Yuri doesn't realize how far back this mistreatment stretches in his family.But he feels dirty and hollow as the next victim.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Illicit Affairs

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This fic alludes to sexual assaults. While it isn't explicit, it does allude to rape occurring to Yuri when he is underage. This isn't something that I just made up for the sake of being emo, though. These are events that are hinted at happening in Yuri's and Dorothea's support conversation. I recommend reading/watching those.
> 
> With that warning aside, I wanted to write this fic as an exploration of generational abuse and assault. I hope everyone understands what I'm doing with this... please leave Kudos and Comments if you do (or if you don't and have questions!). I really appreciate it!!
> 
> Also, a special shout out to spark_plugx who challenged me to write a fic based on a song from Taylor Swift's "Folklore" album.

Yuri pulled his thick woolen cloak over his head as he walked out into the chilly morning air. Enbarr was quiet at this time of the morning, the sky was still grey, the streetlamps were still lit, a slight fog had lifted up from the sewers and factory chimneys. He didn’t feel cold, but he clutched the cloak hood high and tight over himself, trying to cover his hair, his face. 

Yuri gulped, he could hear the bolted lock on the door clicking into place behind him. Those thick oak doors were shut, cutting off the decadent townhouse from him. Had Yuri his wits about him, then he would have scoffed-- he could easily break in if he wanted to.

But he felt numb. Numb and silent and afraid for the first time that he could easily remember.

There were bruises on his wrists. Kiss marks he hadn’t consented to on his shoulders. His velvet waistcoat had been so neat and stately the day before when he had attended the opera, but now it felt filthy and cheap. He looked at the purse of gold coins that had been pressed into his hands that morning as he got dressed. A quick, easy solution to a night that never should have happened.

He stared at the ground ahead and began to move his feet.

Yuri didn’t think as he walked. He just placed one foot in front of the other, down the empty cobblestone streets. Not far from here was the hotel he should have slept in last night. Strange how he felt less and less safe in the rich side of the city.

_ What a beautiful siren you are… Sing for me, little impersonator. You’ll do if I can’t have her… please, sing again, just for me-- _

Never had Yuri missed the gutters more.

* * *

**_The count’s hands gripped at her skirts. Before she could say anything, his lips were on her neck, his chest pressed against her back and the many decorative buttons on his vest ground uncomfortably against her spine._ **

**_“M-My lord, I can’t--” Bess stammered, trying desperately to end the moment._ **

**_“Shhhh~” he cooed to her, pulling up the hem of her servant’s livery by the fistful. In only three hurried motions, his hands were on her thighs. “Oh, Bess… my beautiful Bess, let me taste you.”_ **

**_“But her ladyship--” Bess gasped. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped onto her duster’s handle, but she had nothing else to find purchase on. Nothing to hide behind. No defense to be found in the vast noble parlor._ **

**_“My wife is a frigid shrew,” the count huffed, pushing against Bess’s back until she stumbled forward. He bent her over the ornate, lacquered console table, pressing his nether regions against her own. “You understand me so much more, Bess… You’ve worked here so long, we’re close, aren’t we? Please, Bess, I feel so alone having to sleep beside that cold hearted witch.”_ **

**_Bess gulped and stared at the floor, where the white plaster molding met the polished wood floor. She didn’t speak, already knowing the outcome that waited for her._ **

**_What could she possibly say that wouldn’t end in her arrest or dismissal? There was a far worse fate that waited for her on the streets. Penniless and starving._ **

**_“Beautiful Bess,” he moaned into her ear as he unbuttoned his breeches._ **

* * *

_ Mariya had heard it dozens of times before, but somehow, she still liked it when the words were whispered, groaned, and panted. _

_ “You’re so beautiful!” _

_ She smiled half-heartedly, keeping one hand against the stone wall at her back as he thrust against her. Like all the rest, he rutted without much care for her comfort or her desires… but why would he? Mariya knew what she was. It hadn’t been a life she chose, but it was a life she knew how to live. _

_ “You’re pretty handsome yourself,” she managed to say before biting back a yelp of pain. There was a bit of broken glass on the ground, it poked through the worn heels of her shoes.  _

_ “So beautiful--” he huffed, his eyes closed. Not that he could see her anyway, it was too dark, this small of a town in the Faerghus countryside had no street lanterns. “Oh, Saints, you’re perfect!” _

_ Mariya looked up. She could see a bit of the stars from this angle… Between uneven thatched roofs and shingles, the silvery little speckles glittered in the night. Sometimes, Mariya liked to imagine that she was one of those stars. Pale and admired, with a heart of passionate fire that was always just out of reach. _

_ She also liked to dream that someday, one of the men who traveled through town and gave her coins to call her beautiful would stay. That one of them might come back for her and mean it when they told her she was everything they wanted. Sometimes, she dared to dream of love. _

_ Mariya closed her eyes and sighed. She sifted her fingers through his hair, grasping onto him as his hips picked up a more rapid pace. Mariya knew what was coming next. _

_ “Say it again,” she murmured. “Tell me how beautiful I am…” _

_ “You’re a masterpiece--!” _

* * *

By the time Yuri walked back into his gang’s hideout, he had spent hours wandering the length of Enbarr’s most prominent avenue. The legs of his nice, new trousers had trod through puddles and the grime of the lower class neighborhoods. Without thinking, he had dragged himself here, to the place he used to live. To the place he had taken in street orphans and built an empire of spies, pickpockets, and informants.

They were still here. He had not seen his rag-tag group of child rouges for months… but they had not abandoned the place he made for them.

“Boss?!” one of them gasped, a younger kid who called himself Twigs. Yuri blinked and looked up from the ground, swallowing back the numbness as the gang of nere’do’wells all began to scrambled from their various perches to see him.

“Where have you been?!”

“Are you ok?”

“You’re dressed real fancy, Boss!”

“ ‘Ave you been posin’ as a rich fella?”

Among the curious small voices, one of the taller children approached Yuri. She was only two years younger than him, thin as a rail, but she frowned like she was sixty years older. Her eyes were wise and grey, a child who had lived more tragedies than she deserved. Archer was her go-by.

Pushing aside a few of the nosier little ones, she stopped in front of him, close enough to converse in a hushed tone.

“Boss… you ok?” she asked, looking under the shadows of his hooded cloak to see his face. While Yuri knew he didn’t have any bruises on his face from the night before, he was sure that Archer could see something hollow in him. “You got that job to take out that noble brat but you never came back, I… figured you were on the lamb.”

“I was,” he nodded, then forced a cocky smirk, his signature look. “But luck’s always on my side, Arch, you know that. Got picked up by a shiny Faerghus nobleman, I’m his ward now.”

Archer’s eyes widened. “You’re adopted?”

Yuri shrugged. “For now. We’ll see how long it lasts, but I thought I’d come by for a visit now that I’ve got these deep pockets to dip into.”

Archer looked him up and down, and he could see the questioning in her gaze. She didn’t know enough of noble life to see the things that were truly out of place about him, but she could tell that something just wasn’t right. Yuri’s shoulders began to tense. He wasn’t lying to her, but he was leaving out the part in which he had purchased luxurious accommodations as a gift to himself only to be assaulted on his first night in the upper echelons.

He didn’t want her to see that in his face, he’d taught her how to sense a lie.

“I brought a gift,” Yuri blurted, holding up the pouch of gold he had clutched in his hand. The younger children all began to chirp and chatter excitedly. Gold held promise for them. Gold meant food, shoes, and possibilities. He handed the bag to Archer.

“This from your new family?” she asked with a scowl.

Yuri shrugged, skirting around the details. “Theater district. I saw the opera last night.”

“Opera?”

“Boss, did you see that singer?”

“I hear she’s magic!”

“Nah, she’s just a kid! If I was better at singin’ I coulda been a star too.”

“You’re too dumb to be an opera singer.”

The kids all broke into giggles and jokes, beginning to disperse amongst themselves. Most of them were too young to understand the strangeness of what was going on with their protector, but Archer and a few other older members of their gang lingered around him.

“Good fleecing up near the opera house?” Dodge, a boy close to Yuri’s age, asked. “We hittin’ there next, boss?”

“No--” Yuri blurted out, his voice snapping with an urgency that wasn’t lost on the others. “None of you will go near the opera house, do you understand me?”

The other thieves glanced between themselves.

Archer commented, “You’ve been gone for months, Yuri. Do you really think you can just waltz in here with a bag full of money and then start telling us what we can or can’t do? If this kind of money is out there, then we need it! Your lil present won’t get us far.”

_ Sing for me, I know you can! Yes, there! You feel so good… You sound like an angel… So beautiful, so young-- _

Yuri lurched forward, grabbing Archer by the collar of her ill-fitted tunic. He locked eyes with her, something furious in his soul burning through his irises.

“I’m the one who saved you pathetic lot from starving in the streets,” he hissed. “For years I protected you, I led you, I made you into a force to be reckoned with in Fodlan. And because I’ve managed to get us all more leverage than we’ve ever had-- a foot in the nobility door-- you think you can question my judgment?”

Archer gulped, and for a moment, Yuri felt guilty. Because there were so many things he could not make himself admit out loud. That the money wasn’t stolen. That there was a perverse monster in fancy clothes and a taste for young flesh lurking in the sculpted courtyards. That he would never sing in public again.

Archer nodded her head, conceding to his authority. “I’m sorry.”

Yuri released her, his eyes flickered away and he turned. “Stay away from the opera house.”

* * *

**_Bess felt her chest clenching and her eyes stinging. She silently begged the Goddess to lift his eyes. To make the count, her count, look at her. But he refused to, he was just cold. Aloof. Looking out the window or at his desk of papers._ **

**_“A carriage will be arriving this evening to take you to your new accommodations,” he mentioned with an icy tone. “In my generosity, I’ve arranged for you to stay at a convent for the duration of your…” he hesitated, and for a moment, Bess thought he was going to look at her. That he had to. “Your condition.”_ **

**_He didn’t look. Tears began to fall down her cheeks._ **

**_“But… But H--”_ **

**_The count held up a hand, cutting her off, and his lips pursed together in a thin line. “Remember your place here, Bess.”_ **

**_She let out a sob, looking at her feet. “M… My Lord,” she tried again, forgoing the first name she had been calling him in private for several months now. Ever since he first pressed against her in the parlor._ **

**_“Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Bess.”_ **

**_“What about the baby?” Bess blurted, looking back up at him, tears streaming down her puckered, sorrowful face. “My Lord, what if it’s a son? Wh-What if he has your crest?”_ **

**_The count slammed his hands down on his desk. “SILENCE!”_ **

**_Bess held her breath._ **

**_And only then did he finally look at her. His face full of venom and anger. “I should never have let you stay on here once your true nature was revealed,” he spat. “You’re a loose woman, Bess, Goddess knows how many men you’ve seduced, I will not take the blame for your reckless, wanton ways! You’re just a shameless little whore trying to extort my pedigree!”_ **

**_Bess’s face contorted as she tried desperately not to start wailing again. “I… I… I s-s-orry,” she stammered. “My Lord, I… I love you…”_ **

**_Hearing that softened him a bit, and the count let out a heavy breath before he adjusted his waistcoat. “Yes, well… you’ll survive this. You’re young yet… how old are you, exactly?”_ **

**_“Seventeen…”_ **

**_“Exactly. You’ll be fine, Bess. Faerghus isn’t as cold as they say it is.”_ **

**_Bess looked down at her shoes again, feeling hopeless and helpless. She’d only have a few more hours before she would be sent away, to the other side of Fodlan just to keep the countess from realizing what her husband had done._ **

* * *

_ The slap stung against her cheek. Mariya sucked in her breath and clenched her hands into fists at her sides.  _

_ “You little bitch,” she hissed, the aging brothel owner who had allowed Mariya to stay and work at her establishment. “You think you’re something special don’t you? You think you can just do as you please? You work for me, remember that?!” _

_ Mariya hardened her jaw. “I don’t see what this has to do with my employment.” _

_ “HA!” the madame scoffed. “I’m not paying for you to have some disgusting little brat, Mariya! You don’t get to play house in my brothel. Do you think you’ll be able to make the same money in a few months when your gut starts sticking out and you look like a fat cow? Not even to mention the bedrest after birth!?” _

_ This was the reaction Mariya had expected. Whores usually didn’t plan to get pregnant, and she had known several who had pregnancies quietly done away with. In the city, there were healers who could use their magic to help working women out. _

_ But Mariya hadn’t wanted to do away with it. She’d thought about it for weeks and with each passing day, she had come to want her baby more and more.  _

_ “Then I’ll leave,” Mariya offered. “Pack my things and go… you can find someone new for my room. Something fresh to entice your customers, right?” _

_ The madame reeled her arm back, about to slap Mariya again, but this time, Mariya lifted her hand and stopped the attack, grasping the madame by her wrist. Both of them glared at one another. _

_ “You owe me money for all I’ve done for you,” the madame hissed. _

_ “Send me a bill,” Mariya hissed back. “But I want this baby… I plan to keep him.” _

_ The madame snorted. “So sure it’s a boy?” _

_ “I am,” Mariya insisted, shoving herself away from the confrontation. She moved towards the door with a hand placed protectively over her gradually growing belly. “He’s going to be strong and beautiful and clever… Everything I’m not.” _

* * *

Yuri didn’t go back to Lord Rowe’s estate until he had run out of money, about a week after the incident outside the opera house. His tail tucked between his legs, he had crept his way back to the noble house and braced himself for the lecture and punishment which was to follow.

But by now, he knew he was broken. The bruises had faded from his wrists, along with every other mark on his body. By all appearances, he was completely fine. But Yuri felt empty and cold.

“I can’t say I’m particularly surprised,” Lord Rowe grunted, looking Yuri up and down with a harsh disdain. “You’re a peasant, it’s only natural for such lowly creatures as yourself to start revelling in the excess, but I thought your crest would give you the common sense to keep such things within your own country’s borders.”

Yuri stiffened his jaw. Lowly creature indeed… 

“I have friends in Enbarr,” Yuri remarked quietly, to justify his ‘lowly’ train of thought. “I wanted to visit them.”

“So you run off in the night and use my good name as a credit all over Adrestia?!” Rowe shouted, his eyes blazing. “You goddess forsaken idiot!”

Yuri willed himself not to flinch. Not to wince. Not to show even an ounce of reaction to another cold-hearted noble. He glanced towards the floor to focus on faded dye in the antique rug that covered the lord’s office. Yuri took in a breath.

Rowe took his silence as insolence. 

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy--” Rowe growled, firmly grabbing Yuri by the chin and jerking his eyes upward. They both glared at each other. “I will not have you acting like your mother’s son,” he spoke under his breath, unforgiving and judgmental. It made Yuri want to reach out and snap his neck. “You’re  _ my heir _ now, do you understand me? I won’t have a whoreson galavanting about and dragging me name through the mud.”

Yuri wanted to throttle him. For talking about his mother, for being so pompous and condescending. He wanted to scream that he had been punished enough for one lifetime, but Yuri didn’t want to argue with a noble about suffering.

Rowe would never understand. Would never see him as anything more than just a crest to be used. A filthy little rat in a fancy bow.

“Yes sir,” Yuri spoke the words through clenched teeth. “I understand.”

Rowe let him go and turned on his heel, moving back towards his desk. “Go pray to the Goddess for wisdom and self-respect. Clearly you need more of both.”

* * *

**_Bess looked at the squalling infant in her lap and felt her heart fill with resentment and sorrow. Her labor had been long and painful and in the end, she felt like it was all for nothing. Her child was born… a daughter with no crest. Only the wisps of her father’s lilac hair._ **

**_“Keep crying…” Bess muttered, feeling sore and sick. “It won’t get you anywhere.”_ **

**_She had cried. She had tried to write letters, too. But her count wanted nothing to do with her now. He didn’t want their baby, he didn’t want her. It was a shame that the baby looked so much like him… she would grow up as a living reminder of everything Bess had lost._ **

**_A reminder of how stupid and foolish she was, for ever thinking that the count had cared about her._ **

**_“What name should we put on the records?” the nun asked her, a stern woman who was understanding enough, but not very sympathetic to Bess’s plight._ **

**_Bess sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know… I… I was so sure it would be a boy. I was going to name him after his father… I don’t have a name for a girl.”_ **

**_The nun pursed her lips together. “It isn’t right to leave a baby nameless.”_ **

**_“You name her, then,” Bess muttered, leaning back against the old pillows of her birthing bed. “I’m too tired… I just wish she would sleep.”_ **

**_The nun sighed and began to scribble onto the record sheet. “Alright then… Mariya. Mariya Reitveld.”_ **

**_Bess looked between the nun and her baby. Mariya. It was a bit easier to look at her now that she had a name, but Bess still couldn’t help the vitriol brewing in her gut. All the same, she picked her baby back up and patted her back, trying to calm her down._ **

**_“Alright, Mariya, there there…” Bess muttered. “Quiet down, I need to sleep.”_ **

* * *

_ Autumn came early this year, with icy winds coming down from the north and shaking the leaves from the trees. The tiny cottage that Mariya was leasing had a chimney and hearth, but it was a small thing, barely big enough to radiate any warmth. It was all she could afford, though… Not many people were willing to rent a room to a pregnant whore. _

_ There wasn’t even a midwife who would take her as a patient.  _

_ But Mariya had managed on her own. When her pains began, she boiled her own water and rags. She settled herself by the hearth. She prayed to the Goddess and the Saints and coached herself through the labor. The howling wind swallowed her screams and in the middle of an unseasonably cold afternoon, Mariya welcomed her son. _

_ Laying in a pile of blankets and toweling on the floor, she smiled at her baby. The fireplace light made him look like an angel, glowing golden in her arms. _

_ “You’re so perfect,” Mariya whispered. She was exhausted, but didn’t want to sleep yet. Her newborn son was holding onto her finger, grasping with all his strength. He was too young yet to open his eyes, but he was born with curls of lilac hair, just like she had. It didn’t even matter who his father may have been, her son was every bit her own. _

_ “You’re  _ my _ son,” Mariya cooed. “Perfect little angel that you are…”  _

_ The baby gurgled slightly, a tiny little grunting sound from the back of his throat. Mariya giggled and tucked him closer against her chest so that he could feel her heartbeat against his tiny cheek.  _

_ “My darling… My perfect Ilya…” she had decided on his name the moment he was born. “You’re going to do amazing things someday, my love.” _

_ Ilya squeezed her finger again, as if responding to her voice, wishing he could talk back to her. He didn’t need to speak, though, for Mariya knew what he wanted to tell him. _

_ She kissed the cashmere top of his head. _

_ “I love you too, Ilya…” _

* * *

After he had pretended to pray, per Rowe’s pompous demands, Yuri went to his room and locked the door. He felt numb one moment, then filled with rage the next. There were so many things he didn’t know how to say to anyone and he just wanted to scream until his lungs gave out.

He laid on his bed and stared at the ceiling, retracing the steps of his life and how he had gotten here. When he ran away from home, it was in the effort to make money to send home for his mother’s medication. Somehow, that honest, innocent effort had turned into theft and spying and creating a gang of lost children that made up a network stretching further and further across Fodlan. He had risen so high and yet fallen so low, with every ounce of power stripped from him in one moment that Yuri couldn’t stop reliving when he slept.

“...Are you disappointed in me, Mama?” he asked the air. His mother didn’t know what he did with his life. He wrote her letters and sent money home, while she wrote back always begging him to visit soon. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what had become of her beloved little boy, especially not now...

Feeling tears prick at his eyes, Yuri’s voice cracked. “I wish I could still be your angel. I wish… your Ilya was still in here somewhere.”

But right now, he didn’t feel like Ilya Reitveld. He didn’t feel like Yuri Leclerc either.

He just felt empty.


End file.
